Thursday, May 31, 2007

The June edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors, the Carnival of Environmental Education, is upon us. Please make a submission and get your submissions in today! Use the handy submission link in the LIGO box -- scroll down to the right.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

SW Anderson is an astute observer and has the most insightful words I have heard on Cindy Sheehan's decision to retire from the field of battle.

There is an important role for the maverick in American politics. But we also need statesmen/women who can govern reasonably in the real world of multiple factions and multitudinous factors. Long range success in politics often requires shortterm half-measures and disappointments.

Those of us who want to see the errors of the Bush years put behind us should be careful not to form a circular firing squad.

In 1980 it was disunity among Democrats that assured the election of Ronald Reagan.In 1994 it was disunity among Democrats that allowed Newt his "revolution".

Monday, May 28, 2007

Malvina Reynolds wrote a song almost every day. Often a word or two from the newspaper would inspire her. This little song took flight with the manned space missions of the 1960s. It is another selection from the first reader I taught from in 1969. I was shocked to find a song I knew in the reader. It's a good one to use during the Space unit each year. Pete Seeger wrote the music and popularized it.

From Way Up Here

From way up here the earth looks very small,It's just a little ball of rock and sea and sand,No bigger than my hand.

From way up here the earth looks very small,They shouldn't fight at allDown there, upon that little sphere.

Their time is short, a life is just a day,You'd think they'd find a way.You'd think they'd get alongAnd fill their sunlit days with song.

From way up here the earth looks very small,It's just a little ball,So small, so beautiful and clear.

Their time is short, a life is just a day,Must be a better way,To use the time that runsAmong the distant suns.

From way up here the earth is very small,It's just a little ball,So small, so beautiful and dear.

by Malvina Reynolds

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The series of posts, A Poem to Start the Week, is my little anthology of poetry, many of which I have used with my students in elementary schools during 27 years of teaching.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

The Washington Post has broken the story (gasp!) that intelligence analysts knew, and advised the administration, before the Republicans invaded Iraq (without a consensus of support in the world or even at home) that the likely result would be terrible sectarian violence, new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan for Al Qaeda, a surge of radical politics in Islamic countries, an opportunity for Iran to exert more influence in the region, and a financial windfall for terrorist groups. Good grief! I knew those things were likely and I am just a reader of the news with one college course in the history of the Middle East who has lived 60 years in an reasonably sane state of awareness.

The magnitude of the Republican folly of the last six years is mindboggling, and plain for all to see. Though a small percentage (less than 30%) of Americans still profess support for Bush, I believe, if you could read their hearts you'd see most know a castastrophic error was made and fib to the interviewers in a misplaced sense of patriotic duty.

On the very last day of school, with only an hour left in the school day, I pressed the all-call button in our school office and made the big announcement: Our nature study grant has been approved by the state with FULL funding!

Wow! In addition, a local lumber company has promised some free materials for the construction of the bridge and stations along our trail.

I had hoped to get up to half funding and make up the rest from local school and civic groups.

They liked it, they really liked it! (Apologies to Sally Field.)

When I first started thinking about it, the project was just a modest extention of the current little nature trail. Then as I read, talked to naturalists, professors, other teachers, my students, -- I began to realize that what I really want is more than that. We want our kids to learn more. We want them to do real science, to write from real experience, to learn to appreciate and protect resources, to use math in real situations, to read with an immediate purpose, to tie our community into the history they are studying. We have seen studies that show learning that takes place in the context of the real world around you, sticks.

So the nature trail extension became a small but necessary part of the first year of a new component of our continuing program of using the environment as an integrating context for learning.

Now I have some work cut out for me this summer as we plan the implementation of this new effort.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Friday will end another school year -- my twenty-seventh as a teacher. I suppose this poem by Langston Hughes can make a pretty good, if tough, valedictory message for my 94 fourth-graders as they move along to fifth.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.But all the timeI'se been a-climbin' on,And reachin' landin's,And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the darkWhere there ain't been no light.So, boy, don't you turn back.Don't you set down on the steps.'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.Don't you fall now—For I'se still goin', honey,I'se still climbin',And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

by Langston Hughes

I join that mother and Hughes.

Some of you,my students,have encountered tacks and splinters all right,and worse.

But most of you have had itpretty easy,really,and would do well to realize(realize, realize)that the things for which you struggleare mostprecious.

Keep climbing, kids.Keep turning corners.Feel your way in the dark, if you have to.Don't turn back.Persevere.

And know,whatever the the other kids tell you,whatever Daddy tells you,or Aunt Christine,or the Big Test,whatever the world tells you,know,

know,

like those apples we slicedsideways,way back last August,the first day of school,the apple with spots,the crooked one,the one with the rotten spothiddenunder the glossy skin,the yellow one,the small one,the wrinkled one,(no two alike, those apples):

There is a star in you, too.

Find that star,and let it shine.

Make it shine.

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The series of posts, A Poem to Start the Week, is my little anthology of poetry, many of which I have used with my students in elementary schools during 27 years of teaching.